


Atrocity

by pipermca



Series: Heat Imperative [2]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Abuse of an Intimate Partner, Cultural Differences, Dark, Don't Like Don't Read, Dubious Consent, Dubious Consent in Reference to Heat Cycles, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, Graphic Violence, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Loss of Control, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mental Instability, Reference to Past Non-Con, Sticky Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-12 11:57:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19945795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipermca/pseuds/pipermca
Summary: It was bad enough that Bluestreak was trapped underground and was being held prisoner by a Decepticon.It was horrifying that the Decepticon was one of the Seekers that Bluestreak feared and hated so much.But then, while they were both still trapped together, Thundercracker went into heat.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to [Reciprocity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15194399/chapters/35239295), but you don't need to have read that story to understand this one.
> 
> On the other hand, this is a much, **much** darker fic than Reciprocity. Mind the tags.

When he came back online, the litany of error messages on Bluestreak’s HUD was alarming, to say the least.

_Fuel level: 41%  
Minor energon leak detected_

_Energy level: 60%  
Unidentified power drain detected_

_Warning: Unauthorized access to auxiliary system functions detected_

_Short-range communication systems: offline_  
_Long-range communication systems: offline_  
_Transformation cog: disabled_  
_Wing sensors: offline_  
_Exterior vehicle sensors: offline_  
_Weapons systems: offline_  
_Self-repair diagnostics: disabled_  
_Exterior lighting: offline_

It was a confusing jumble of systems that were non-functional, most of which should not have been connected in any way. And he worried over that mention of unauthorized access. But more concerning was the fact that he couldn’t feel his door wings at all. He hoped they weren’t damaged too badly; recalibrating the delicate sensors in the doors was a painful process. And he **really** hoped that one or both of them weren’t missing... He didn’t even know if Ratchet and Wheeljack had the parts to fabricate new ones.

Bluestreak shifted as he tried to figure out if his door wings were still attached, and he realized that he couldn’t really move. He could squirm slightly, but his hands and pedes were pinned in some way.

The old panic rose in Bluestreak’s processor.

_Trapped. Can’t move. Damaged. Pinned. Suffocating. Fire. Help. **Help!** _

He onlined his optics and was greeted with darkness. He could hear noises in the darkness, and he struggled to identify them. A scraping sound nearby. Above him, explosions, peppered with blaster fire. He heard the low groan of settling debris, and his ventilation system warned of particulate matter in the air.

With his anxiety rising still, his ventilation systems tripped into overdrive as it attempted to pull in clean air. Every piece of armor clamped down to protect his protoform. His engine revved, preparing for the moment he saw daylight and could flee the prison of debris and bodies and flame that surely he was entombed within.

_Dark. Buried. Trapped. Alone. Help. Help! **Help me!**_

He must have made a noise, perhaps a moan of terror as he tried to reel in the runaway processes, or maybe a soft whimper of fear, and he wasn’t sure which it was because he was too busy clawing through his systems, searching for the program that his therapist had installed millions of years ago to help keep him sane, and he was fighting to maintain what little control he had to stop himself from shrieking for help, but just as he found the program and launched it he heard someone speak.

“Are you back online?”

The voice wasn’t one that Bluestreak immediately recognized. It was deep and sonorous, and as Bluestreak’s tranquilizer program initialized the voice felt almost comforting. Soothing, even. It echoed strangely, giving Bluestreak the impression that they were in a large, empty space. If his door wing sensors had been online, he might have been able to tell how big of a space it was. As his ventillations slowed and the panicked whirling of his spark calmed, Bluestreak lifted his helm and looked around.

Still dark. And his diagnostics hadn’t mentioned any problems with his optical sensors. And he couldn’t turn on his headlights because his exterior lighting was offline for some reason.

“Yes, I’m online. I can’t move, though? And I can’t see.” He tried again to move his hands and pedes, and realized that there was something wrapped around them. Bluestreak’s fear returned, but this time it wasn’t about being buried alive. “Am I tied up?”

The other mech made a soft noise like a shrug. “Yes. Sorry. I didn’t want to take any chances.” There was another scraping noise, and a muffled curse. “I swear I saw one of those awful diesel generators back here before the lights went out.”

Testing the bindings around his wrists and ankles, Bluestreak found them tied firmly. Fortunately, whoever had tied him up had left him lying on his side, so that his door wings weren’t pinned against the ground. That was thoughtful.

Bluestreak’s optics adjusted to the extremely dim lighting, and he realized there was a light moving around some distance away from him, perhaps behind a wall. There was another thump and a scrape, and then a generator blatted to life with a rattling roar.

Above him, florescent lights flickered to life. He was in something that looked like a large garage, or maybe a loading bay. He’d seen some of them when visiting humans for outreach programs. A semi truck was parked against a wall, while two trailers were backed into bays on the far side of the room. On the other side of the room was a row of desks and filing cabinets, arranged in a square like a sketch of a small room inside the larger garage.

One wall of the garage had crumbled into a disaster of rubble and debris. That explained the dust in the air. The rest of the room seemed to be intact. For now, anyway.

Bluestreak glanced around, trying to find his rifle. His onboard weapons were offline, but he could still use a rifle, even if he’d have to target manually. But his rifle was nowhere to be seen.

Then Bluestreak’s optics caught movement over where he’d seen the faint light, and he tensed up all over again.

A blue Seeker with red trim shuffled through a gap in the wall until he could almost stand upright. The Seeker walked towards him, bent over to avoid striking his helm on the ceiling. “That’s better,” Thundercracker said, his deep voice resonating through Bluestreak’s frame. “My landing lights were too focused to be much use.”

As Thundercracker approached, Bluestreak flinched backwards. The Seeker paused, then moved forward again, more slowly, with his hands held out in a placating gesture.

Bluestreak’s tranquilizer program was still running, soothing the panic that had risen in his processor at the memories triggered by the dust, the dark, and his immobility. But it was coded only to handle the panic and fear caused by those situations, and did nothing for the raw anger that flared within Bluestreak’s spark at the sight of the Seeker. “Stay away from me!” Bluestreak said. Ugh. His vocalizer had squealed when he spoke. He reset it as he tried to wiggle away from the Decepticon. “I said stay back!”

Thundercracker heaved a sigh and shook his helm. He ignored Bluestreak’s sound of protest and knelt beside him. After checking the bindings on the Praxian’s wrists and ankles, he nodded. “I just wanted to make sure they weren’t too tight... And that you couldn’t get lose,” he said. Then he rose and walked away from Bluestreak, to the other side of the garage.

Bluestreak had never been captured before. He was always kept behind the front lines with the support staff during a battle, and he plied his craft from a distance. Bluestreak called up the (very brief) instruction he’d received in basic training after joining the Autobots on what to do if you were captured. The gruff instructor had seemed harried, and had rushed through the points of his lesson.

“If you’re ever captured, and if you actually survive long enough to be brought in as a prisoner, there’s a good chance they want something from you,” the sergeant had said. His tone had made it crystal clear that he thought the chances of them surviving the capture were slim. “Keep these three points in mind, and you might just make it long enough to get back to your units.” He tipped off the items on his fingers as he spoke. “One: don’t give them any information except for your designation, rank and serial number. You don’t know what they might do with even a tiny byte of information. It’s best not to give them anything. Which brings me to point two: don’t negotiate for anything. Don’t let them bait you into it, either. You are not skilled negotiators. The ‘Cons aren’t going to let you go or make you more comfortable unless you give them something useful in return. And finally: be observant. Gather what intel you can. Look for opportunities. **If** you’re rescued, and **if** you make it back to your unit, any information you collected could be valuable.” The sergeant had frowned around at them before shaking his helm. “But above all, do what you can to survive. Make that your first priority... If you can.” His expression showed his doubt at the recruits’ ability to do that.

Bluestreak knew that things had changed since they’d come to Earth. Everyone knew all of the members of the opposite faction, so simply telling Thundercracker his designation, rank and serial number was pointless. The Seeker knew all that already. Plus, prisoners were traded all the time: for resources, advantages, and other prisoners. Optimus Prime gave his troops strict orders: no torture, and no killing anyone who was not presenting an immediate threat to you or other Autobots. On the other hand, the Decepticons tortured their prisoners for information, but never killed them (after capturing them, anyway). Bluestreak had heard the twins talk about what they’d been through the times they had been captured, and he fervently hoped that he wouldn’t be subjected to the same torture they had been.

So. _Be observant._

The Decepticon’s motions seemed off, but Bluestreak couldn’t put words to what seemed wrong about his gait. He moved stiffly, as if his hips hurt, and his wings quivered almost constantly. Maybe he was damaged? Or maybe it was just because he was stooped over. Thundercracker moved to the far side of the garage and then sat heavily, leaning against the wall and staring at Bluestreak.

Distantly, Bluestreak thought that Thundercracker might actually be handsome... If, you know, he wasn’t a Seeker.

There was a loud explosion overhead, and Bluestreak flinched again dust tricked down out of the garage ceiling.

Thundercracker looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. “Hopefully the fighting moves off soon,” he said. “And I hope your host mech goes with it. He’s got our communications jammed so I can’t call for help to get us out of here.” He leaned his helm back on the wall behind him. “But once I get through, the Constructicons will have us out of here in no time.”

 _Don’t negotiate._ Was offering assistance negotiating? Probably. But Bluestreak also wanted information for his own use. “If my comms were working I could call Blaster for help, but they’re showing as offline.” He lifted his helm, turning his comm array towards the Seeker. “Does it look damaged? Maybe I hurt it when... whatever happened.” He vaguely remembered an explosion, and falling. He must have fallen into this basement along with the Seeker before the ceiling came down.

“It’s not damaged,” Thundercracker said. He shifted as he sat, and a grimace flickered across his face. “I disabled your comms before you came back online.”

That explained the message Bluestreak had about unauthorized access to his auxiliary systems. Just as he made that connection, he recoiled. “Ugh! You were... You were in my processor??” Bluestreak’s plating crawled at the thought of a Seeker plugging into him and messing with his subsystems. He examined his system logs again and snorted in disbelief at what he found. “So, fine. You disabled my comms, and I understand disabling my weapons, too. But what the slag did you do to my other systems? Diagnostics? Vehicle mode sensors? External lights? What, were you afraid I was going to blind you with my headlights?” He dragged his pedes across the ground, testing the binding around his ankles. “No wonder my rear bumper’s numb. What was the use in that?”

Thundercracker at least had the grace to look contrite. “Yeah, sorry. I’m rusty on my field repair training. I was just trying to disable your weapons and comms, but somehow turned off a few other things, too. Sorry about that.” He looked up as another shower of dust trickled down onto them. “Don’t worry. I’ll have Hook get those systems back online for you when they find us.” Thundercracker pulled his knees up to his chest as if trying to make himself smaller, but then immediately stretched them out again in front of him. He fidgeted with his hands, like he didn’t know what to do with them. “You’re a valuable prisoner. Lord Megatron will want you in good condition so we can get something good for you in return.”

Bluestreak knew his door wings had shot upwards in surprise, even if he couldn’t feel the movement. “I’m valuable?”

Fixing Bluestreak with a steady look, Thundercracker nodded. “Yeah. You’re a dangerous mech. Especially to our Seeker squadrons.”

The tranquilizer program was still running in Bluestreak’s subroutines, gently smoothing over spikes in fear and anxiety. But it wasn’t programmed to do anything about the anger that rose inside him again, coloured with a sheen of satisfaction. Bluestreak narrowed his optics. “I wonder why that is,” Bluestreak said flatly. He could hear the sergeant from basic training telling him not to give the enemy any information, but he tuned out the little voice so he could make his point. “You know, sometimes I target the Seekers even when I haven’t been ordered to. And Prowl lets me.” His lips curled up into an ugly smile. “Every one of you I shoot down should just be considered payback.”

Thundercracker’s wings twitched, and the Seeker rubbed his hands on his thighs. “Look,” he said. “Praxus... It shouldn’t have gone down like it did. That wasn’t the original plan.” He shook his helm. “When it comes down to it, we were just following orders.”

“Following orders? **Following orders?!** ” Bluestreak knew that his voice was creeping into the upper range as he snapped at the Seeker, but he couldn’t be bothered to even restrain his fury. His engine revved again, this time in anger. “Drones just follow orders. You **chose** to do what you did. You **chose** to destroy Praxus, and raze it to the ground.” Thank Primus the tranquilizer program was running; Bluestreak didn’t know how he could have had this conversation without it. “You followed an order to commit genocide.”

Thundercracker’s wings sagged and he looked away. He knitted his fingers together for a moment before they slowly drifted back down to his thighs. “I am sorry,” he said. “I have.... I have regrets about what happened in Praxus.”

Bluestreak could not suppress the growl in his engine. If his tranquilizer program had not been running, he knew that this conversation would have plunged him into a darkness so deep that he likely would have spent days recovering from it. But as it was, he only felt the raw burn of rage. The sergeant from basic training was long forgotten as he lifted his torso off the ground so he could look at the Seeker straight on. “Regrets. You have **regrets**. Great. I lost everything: my friends, my neighbours, my home, my livelihood... You helped destroy everyone and everything I’d ever known. It all vanished in flame and smoke, almost killing me in the process... And you have **regrets**.” He spat out the last word and slumped back to the ground, aware that his arms and legs were quivering with anger. “Your **regrets** mean nothing to me.”

There was another explosion above them, and another little shower of dust cascaded down. Ignoring the defeated tilt to Thundercracker’s wings, Bluestreak shut his optics and focused on his ventilations like his therapist had taught him. One way or the other this would be over soon, and if the Decepticons found them first, Bluestreak needed to have his wits about him. He also knew that eventually his tranquilizer program would finish running, and it would be several hours before he could launch it again. He had to stay calm.

Venting in and out soothed the frantic spin of his spark. Vent in: soothing warmth. Happiness. Joy. Vent out: release anger and fear. In. Out. In. Out. Just like he’d practiced.

He heard another scraping noise, and opened his optics to see Thundercracker sliding his legs further apart so he could rub the inside of his shapely thighs. Then the jet yanked his hands back and snapped his legs closed again. The Seeker’s optics were bright, and he was staring at Bluestreak with an intensity that made him vaguely uneasy. When he saw Bluestreak looking at him, he said, “What did you do?”

Bluestreak frowned, distracted by the curve of Thundercracker’s waist and the tilt of his wings. “What?” he asked.

Thundercracker cycled his vents, the turbines in his chest spinning slowly. “You said you lost your livelihood. What did you do?”

Oh. _Don’t give them any information,_ the sergeant said, but what could it matter what Bluestreak used to do, before the war? He pictured his studio and his shop, with all of his wares displayed in the window. He had been so proud of his shop. He glared at Thundercracker. “I was a glass smith. I mostly made optical glass components, but I also made some ornamental pieces.” He remembered how the baubles hanging in the window of his shop sparkled in the light. He felt a sudden pang of sorrow, and he realized that the tranquilizer program had finished running. He took another shaky ventilation and briefly wondered why his processor wasn’t spinning back into dark places.

Oh well. No sense in – what was the saying? Looking a souvenir pony in the intake? Whatever the reason for it, Bluestreak was happy that his processor wasn’t caught in a panicked feedback loop.

Thundercracker was giving him a strangely reverent look. His hands had returned to his thighs once more, and he was rubbing small circles on his plating there. “You were an artist?” he asked softly.

Bluestreak shrugged. “Yeah. I was. Before the Decepticons made me a killer.”

This time, the Decepticon flinched. He seemed to draw into himself, but Bluestreak saw him casting frequent glances his way. Each time, his optics would linger on Bluestreak before looking away again, almost as he was afraid of being caught watching him.

Maybe he was afraid Bluestreak was going to hurt him? Which was ridiculous. As ham-fisted as Thundercracker’s hacking job had been, Bluestreak was not a danger to anyone right now, especially trussed up on the floor like he was.

And yet... Bluestreak saw Thundercracker’s optics slide back to him, and glide over his frame almost admiringly.

It was a little odd, Bluestreak decided. But somehow he didn’t mind the attention.

_Look for opportunities._

Thundercracker had clenched his thighs together again, and his legs trembled with how tightly they were being held together. He’d also stopped rubbing his hands on his thighs, and instead wrapped his arms around his torso, hugging himself tightly. From the slight angle that the Seeker was sitting at, Bluestreak could see that this tips of his fingers were dug into the seams at his side.

Faintly, Bluestreak could hear the Seeker’s fans rattling.

He debated with himself for a few minutes before finally throwing caution to the wind. Sitting here in silence was starting to get to him. The darkness creeping around his processor hadn’t taken hold yet, thankfully, but it was probably only a matter of time. He needed to get his processor working on something, and the easiest way to do that was to talk. “Are you all right?” he asked. “You’re acting really strange.”

Thundercracker stared at Bluestreak, and his wings twitched up and down several times. He opened his mouth, then closed it again with a frown. “Have you...” The Seeker snapped his mouth shut again for a moment, then tried again. “I mean, are the Autobots... Do any of you...” Thundercracker grimaced, and a visible shudder ran through his frame. “Are you...”

Very odd. Bluestreak watched the jet mouth words soundlessly for a few moments more before heaving a sigh. He noticed Thundercracker’s mouth hung open on whatever he was going to say as Bluestreak’s chest heaved with his ventilation. “Usually, if you’re going to ask something, you need to actually finish the question to get the information you want,” Bluestreak said with a flick of his door wing that drew Thundercracker’s gaze in a way that made Bluestreak feel strange. He stilled his wings before continuing, but Primus that was hard to do under the circumstances. “Unless you want me to play twenty questions. The humans taught us that game. It’s sort of fun and it might pass the time. Are you thinking of a mineral, an animal, or a vegetable?”

“What...?” Thundercracker stammered, then shook his helm. He shifted where he sat again, pawing at his thighs. With a sudden jerk of his wings, he seemed to gather some inner strength and blurted out, “Have the Autobots been having trouble with mechs spontaneously going into heat?”

Oh. **Oh!** _Oh..._

Right.

Well, wasn’t that interesting?

_Gather what intel you can._

Bluestreak was intimately familiar with the single incident of a mech going into heat that they’d had. After having no one entering a heat cycle for years, ever since they landed on Earth, Hound had unexpectedly gone into heat after returning from patrol. It had hit him like a transport hauler, coming on hot and fast. He’d accepted Bluestreak’s offer of assistance since his mates were away, and Bluestreak remembered how incredibly intense the scout’s heat imperative had been: far more powerful than any normal heat.

The cause of the heat turned out to be an organic contaminant that Hound had picked up in his travels. After running some tests on Hound, Ratchet and Perceptor had developed a filter to keep any other Autobots from becoming infected, and they had it deployed to all the other Autobots.

Bluestreak hoped that his wide optics could be written off as surprise instead of the sudden realization that came over him. Obviously, the Decepticons had picked up the same contaminant, and had started spreading it amongst themselves. And they had obviously not figured out how to stop it.

“No, we haven’t had that problem,” Bluestreak lied. He frowned, doing his best to look concerned. “Is that what’s happening with you?”

Because of course it was. Thundercracker’s awkward gait when walking, the rubbing at his thighs, wanting to spread his legs apart... And the last puzzle piece fell into place, giving Bluestreak a bit of a jolt. He should have been sent into a mental crash as his tranquilizer program ended and his situation hadn’t changed: still trapped, under meters of rubble, bound hand and pede, with a Seeker watching over him. But now that he knew what was happening, he could identify the faint whiff of pheromones. There was a slight breeze blowing from the rubble at the collapsed end of the garage, past Bluestreak and towards the Seeker. If it had been blowing the other way, Bluestreak knew that his processor wouldn’t be nearly as clear as it was at the moment.

Thundercracker was nodding at Bluestreak’s question, and he let his legs fall apart once more. His interface panel was still closed, but Bluestreak could see the faint sheen of lubrication weeping from the seams on either side. Thundercracker ran his hands down the inside of his thighs once before snatching them back and wrapping his arms around his chest again. “Yes. I’d been hoping that Star and Warp...” He shook his helm and slammed his legs back together again. Lowering his wings, he muttered, “They won’t be back for a week, at least.” But his optics remained fixed on Bluestreak, giving him another lascivious look. “Maybe... Maybe you...” Then he shut his optics tightly and slammed his helm back against the wall of the garage with a resounding bang. “Primus!” he hissed. Even from across the room, Bluestreak could hear the Seeker’s fans spin up again with a rattle.

Now that he was conscious of it, Bluestreak realized that the very faint odor coming from the Seeker was beginning to light up Bluestreak’s own heat coding. He stared at Thundercracker and debated with himself.

Back on Cybertron, if a mech went into heat, it was considered polite to stay as far back from the mech as possible, unless you were asked to assist them **before** their heat imperative became overwhelming. That meant doing what you could to get them someplace safe – and with someone they trusted – **before** they wanted to frag anything that moved, and before everyone wanted to frag them. That wasn’t always easy for the other mech. Overriding your base instincts required some concentration, but it was absolutely doable.

However, not everyone followed those rules.

Bluestreak had once been on the receiving end of a mech who didn’t follow those rules. Consent became fuzzy for mechs deep in the throes of a heat cycle, for both parties involved. But Bluestreak clearly remembered the mech he’d passed on the street who’d caught a hint of Bluestreak’s heat, and followed him back to his flat. Rather than keeping a polite distance, and rather than asking if there was someone else Bluestreak wanted at his side, the other mech had taken advantage of Bluestreak’s state. He made sure that he was the only mech around when Bluestreak’s heat imperative drove the Praxian to find any spike to slake the burning need in his coding.

After that encounter, Bluestreak had sworn that he’d never do that to a mech. When he came across Hound, blazing with heat and swamping the air around him with the strongest pheromones Bluestreak had ever scented, he checked and rechecked and made absolutely sure that Hound was ok with **him** helping Hound to resolve his heat coding, instead of finding a way to wait for either of his mates.

But now... They were trapped underground, Thundercracker’s trine was Primus-knew-where, and Bluestreak could see that the jet’s heat was taking the exact same trajectory as Hound’s had. He figured that it would only be a few minutes – fifteen at the most - before the heat imperative took over Thundercracker’s processor, and he’d be pawing at Bluestreak’s panel.

No wonder he’d been giving Bluestreak those strange looks.

Bluestreak watched as Thundercracker thudded his helm against the wall once more, then cracked his optics open and looked at Bluestreak. The Seeker’s glossa flicked out and wet his lower lip.

Well. If it was going to happen anyway, Bluestreak figured he might as well make it count.

Tuning out the sergeant in his memory who was yelling at him not to negotiate with the enemy, and suppressing the disgust at the thought of getting that close and that intimate with a Seeker, Bluestreak sketched out a plan. His optics swept the garage once more, taking in the pile of rubble, the collection of desks in the corner, and the wires running up the wall. If his wing sensors hadn’t been offline, he might have been able to determine what those wires were for.

Oh well. Time for a gamble. Smokescreen would be proud.

Lifting his numb door wings as high as he could, Bluestreak waggled them in what he hoped was a seductive fashion. Thundercracker’s optics darkened, and his own wings lifted in response. Good, good. “I could probably help you with your little problem,” Bluestreak said, adding a rumble from his engine. Maybe in his heat-addled state, Thundercracker would think it sounded like a thruster firing. Then he lifted his hands. “But I’ll need you to get me out of this.”

A frown formed on Thundercracker’s face, and he shook his helm slightly. “I... I can’t...” he muttered. “You’re a prisoner. An Autobot.” He whined slightly. “A grounder,” he muttered.

Bluestreak wasn’t sure whether his protests were against the suggestion that he should let Bluestreak go, or let Bluestreak sate his heat coding.

The air currents changed, wafting the Seeker’s pheromones towards him, and Bluestreak suddenly cared a lot less which it was.

Twisting where he lay on the floor, Bluestreak lifted his hands again and flexed his fingers. “That’s a shame,” he said, consciously lowering his voice. Ooh, that was a good idea; Thundercracker’s optics grew another shade darker. “Because I’ll bet that having your wings touched feels just as good for a Seeker as it does a Praxian.” He waved his door wings encouragingly.

The look that Thundercracker gave him was one of pure need. He leaned forward from the wall, as if he was on the verge of standing up. Bluestreak heard a soft slide of metal on metal, and between the Seeker’s legs he could see that Thundercracker’s interface panel had transformed away. But then Thundercracker suddenly squeezed his optics shut again and turned his helm away. “Stop that!” he growled. “I know what you’re doing and I’m not... I can’t...” His words faded away into peppered static. He rolled to the side, facing away from Bluestreak, and pulled his knees up to his chest.

Bluestreak stared at the blue jet for a moment before turning his own gaze away, warring with the feeling of self-loathing that crawled over him. He **knew** what it felt like to be in the throes of the heat coding. He **knew** what it felt like to need a mech’s spike in your valve, but yet not wanting that mech to be anywhere near you at the same time. Coming out of the heat delirium under a mech whose designation he didn’t even know had been one of the worst experiences of Bluestreak’s life. (Until, of course, Bluestreak was caught under flaming debris for hours alongside the sparkless frames of his friends.)

He didn’t want to be that unwanted mech – not once, not ever. Not even for a hated Seeker.

But unless someone found them soon – Autobot or Decepticon – this was going to happen. When Thundercracker finally succumbed to his heat coding, he was going to want the closest spike in his valve: Bluestreak’s. And bound up and trapped in this basement, Bluestreak couldn’t remove himself from the Seeker’s presence or the heat scent. Even now, Bluestreak could scent the Seeker’s pheromones growing even stronger in the enclosed space. His engine was starting to run hot, even with his fans running constantly, and he was having to issue a constant stream of overrides just to keep his interface panel closed. Already his coding was urging him towards the source of that delicious scent. Before too long, Bluestreak would not be able to resist the siren call of those chemicals, and would do anything to sate the Seeker’s heat.

He also knew that this was his best chance of getting out of here... If only he get could loose from his bindings.

“Look... Thundercracker?” Bluestreak waited until the jet turned his helm slightly towards him. “You might not believe me, but I’m just as unenthusiastic about what’s going to happen as you are.” He gave the Seeker a flat look, as unsexy as he could make it, when Thundercracker finally looked his way. He needed Thundercracker to listen to him. “But I can scent you already, and it’s obvious that your heat is coming on hard. You know what’s going to come next. And... I can’t help you with it if I’m tied up.” He held up his bound hands again, then tipped his helm to the side. “I mean, maybe Seekers are different, but all the mechs I know want to be held down and fragged within an inch of their life when they’re in heat.” At the quiet whine that escaped Thundercracker’s engine, Bluestreak was sure he was on the right track. He barrelled on. “I don’t think you’re gonna want me to just lie back while you just use me like a frag toy.” He fluttered his door wings again hopefully. “Neither of us wants this to happen, right? But at least give me a chance to do it right... And we can just get it over with.”

Thundercracker stared at him for a long moment, and then his wings gave an answering flutter. The jet rolled awkwardly away from the wall, but Bluestreak’s primed interface systems found his movements almost sensual. Then his processor noted the shape of his wings ( _Seeker! Danger! Enemy!_ ), and Bluestreak suppressed the shudder of loathing that welled up from his core as Thundercracker crawled towards him on his hands and knees. “Your comms are still disabled?” Thundercracker asked, his vocalizer spitting with static.

As the Seeker got closer still, Bluestreak could not suppress the second shudder that came over him, this one of desire. The cloud of pheromones around the jet was just as strong as Hound’s had been, but tasted just slightly exotic. Foreign. Mysterious. Very alluring. As Thundercracker crawled closer, his wings fluttered again, and Bluestreak felt the sudden urge to stroke his hands down their edges.

 _Oh, slag._ Bluestreak tried to focus his wandering attention. This wasn’t the time to fall into an irrecoverable heat haze. A part of him couldn’t even believe what he was about to do, but he knew that it was the best chance he had at getting free from his bonds so he could contact the Autobots. The rest of him was focused on the hot frame that crept towards him. Bluestreak nodded jerkily. “Yup. My comms are still offline,” he said as Thundercracker reached him.

The Seeker’s hands were shaking so hard, it took him five tries to untangle the knot he’d used on the wire around Bluestreak’s wrists. “Stasis cuffs probably would have been easier,” Bluestreak said, more to keep his processor focused than as a jab at the Decepticon’s prisoner-taking skills.

“Didn’t have any,” Thundercracker muttered as he finally freed Bluestreak’s wrists. His hands drifted down Bluestreak’s frame, hesitating over the Praxian’s interface panel. The Seeker’s turbines whined, and he brushed his fingers gently over Bluestreak’s thigh. “Now...?”

It took every bit of Bluestreak’s will power to keep himself from bucking his hips upwards into that touch. “Not yet! Untie my pedes!” he snapped. He rubbed at his wrists where the wire had dug into his cables, partially to sooth the discomfort and partially to keep himself from reaching for the Seeker.

But Thundercracker froze, his fingers still brushing Bluestreak’s thigh. His optics were fixed on Bluestreak’s interface panel, and his fingers twitched. Bluestreak growled and shoved him away. “I’ll do it,” he said, and sat up to grab at the bindings.

Except that put his face just centimeters away from Thundercracker’s. The Decepticon’s optics had darkened almost to a burgundy colour, and they focused on Bluestreak’s. And now Bluestreak could feel the heat radiating off of the Seeker’s frame. A quiet keen was coming from Thundercracker, and he trembled visibly. Behind him, his wings rattled.

Bluestreak caught himself staring at Thundercracker’s optics, deep pools of garnet-red that pulled at him. He reached a hand up, intent on stroking it down the side of Thundercracker’s helm and-

 _Frag._ Bluestreak bit down on his glossa until he tasted energon. The pain cleared his processor for a moment, enough time for him to find the twist in the wire around his ankles and frantically yank on it. With a turn of his wrist and two hard pulls, the wire came loose in his hand. “Yes,” he hissed, and turned to look at Thundercracker again.

This time, he let himself reach up and touch Thundercracker’s cheek. He was burning hot, and his turbines were spinning, doing nothing to relieve the temperature inside him, and he smelled like the All-Spark: rich, divine, luscious, fiery, fertile...

“Now,” Bluestreak murmured, releasing the mental death grip he had on his own heat coding, and he lunged at the Seeker.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder to mind the tags for this story. This chapter is where most of them apply.

Thundercracker fell onto his back with a moan, one that grew louder when Bluestreak lifted his thighs and spread them apart, slotting himself in between his legs. The Seeker clutched at Bluestreak’s hips. “Please,” he whined, pulling on Bluestreak, bucking his own hips upwards in an attempt to get Bluestreak to move. “Please, come on, inside, please...”

“I know it hurts. I know how hot you are,” Bluestreak crooned, giving in to his urge to soothe his mate, calm him, ready him. He looked down at the Seeker fuzzily as his spike pressurized, and Bluestreak groaned as it throbbed. This mech under him needed this now, he could smell it, intoxicating in its richness. He slid forwad, rubbing his hands on his mate’s thighs, letting his thumbs graze the outer folds of his valve, feeling how they were hot and engorged, lubricant already drooling down and pooling beneath him. “I’ll take care of you.” As he slid his spike into the molten heat of that valve, the last word elongated into a moan of pure need.

His first thrust was divine, the second was transcendent, and the third ripped a groan from Bluestreak’s vocalizer. His mate was running so hot, his fans so loud, that Bluestreak knew he would ignite for sure. Instinct made him drive his spike deep, clutching at his mate’s hips and lifting them, getting as deep into that deliciously sloppy channel as he could. All that mattered was giving his mate the transfluid and the overloads needed to transfer his charge and his energy, to spark new life within him...

It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, maybe a full minute, before Bluestreak shuddered into an overload. He grunted as he pumped his hips, spilling his load of transfluid and gripping Thundercracker tight enough to leave dents in the thin plating over his pelvis.

The heat haze lifted enough for Bluestreak to stare down at Thundercracker with a semblance of awareness. Right. He was fragging a **Seeker**. It was probably only the heat response still running through his lines and processor that stopped Bluestreak from reeling into a crash. As it was, loathing swam up through the murk of his processor before being pushed back down by his heat protocols.

Thundercracker’s optics were closed, and his mouth hung open. “More,” Thundercracker said, his voice just barely audible. His hands drifted up to the turbines in his chest, and he jammed his fingers into the fans inside. “Please, please, please,” Thundercracker chanted, just above a whisper, as he wrapped his legs around Bluestreak’s thighs, holding him tight inside of him. “More, please, more...”

Bluestreak’s vents coughed as he drew in another wash of pheromones. Thundercracker’s processor hadn’t even seemed to clear at all, and he hadn’t overloaded. Normally, exposure to charged transfluid was enough to draw at least a weak overload from the mech in heat, enough to bring them out of it, at least for a few minutes. But Thundercracker was still fully in the heat craze.

And Bluestreak felt himself falling back down into it alongside him.

 _Slag! What do I need to do?_ he had time to think, before thinking became impossible and he found himself blind with lust once more.

His spike, which had barely softened before surging back to full pressure with the fresh scent of the Seeker’s pheromones, felt as if every sensor and node along its length had been hyper-sensitized. Bluestreak bent over Thundercracker, helm bowing with the force of his thrusts. Thundercracker urged him to a faster, more fervent pace, pulling him in harder with his legs.

Shuddering, Bluestreak was happy to comply with the unspoken request. He leaned forward over Thundercracker and mouthed at the Seeker’s turbines, nipping at them gently as he felt his own charge rising.

Finally, Thundercracker’s back arched upwards, his hips surging to meet Bluestreak’s with every motion. “ **Harder!** ” he gasped, his voice peppered with static. “More!” Charge crackled along his plating, creating tiny flashes of light inside the gaps of his armor. “Please!” He wrapped his large hands around Bluestreak’s waist, pulling the Praxian against him with punishing strength. 

Bluestreak did what he could to obey. His mate wanted more, wanted it harder, and Bluestreak increased the pace and force of his rutting. He braced his hands against Thundercracker’s chest, slamming his hips against the jet’s harder, each thrust climaxing in a squeal of metal on mesh, their engines screaming in tandem until–

With a frame-wracking quake, Bluestreak overloaded. For an instant his entire focus was on his spike and where it was buried in his mate’s valve, the valve which greedily spasmed around him. Thundercrack’s hands tightened around Bluestreak’s hips, metal crunching beneath his fingers. His optics flared from garnet to the palest salmon as his charge peaked, then grounded out into the floor of the garage beneath him.

Finally, Thundercracker went limp beneath Bluestreak, his fans clattering to a stop and his engine quieting into a stall.

 _Now. **Now!**_ Bluestreak fought through the protocols that fired as soon as he felt his mate go slack into a reboot, the coding that urged him to keep his mate safe, protect him while his systems reset. Thundercracker was vulnerable, helpless, in need of protection, and Bluestreak bit down on his own glossa once more, focusing his attention on the pain and his plan. 

_Look for opportunities._

Leaning forward over Thundercracker’s chest, his spike slipping wetly out of the Seeker’s valve, Bluestreak palmed the Seeker’s medical port open and jammed his data cable into the socket there. He flipped through system accesses, reinforcing his own firewalls as he went (just in case), and quickly found the toggles he was looking for. An ugly grimace lit Bluestreak’s face as a movement of his numb bumper across the ground reminded him of what a sloppy job the jet had done in disabling his own systems.

 _Short-range communication systems: offline_  
_Long-range communication systems: offline_  
_Transformation cog: disabled_  
_Weapon systems: offline_

As soon as he confirmed that Thundercracker’s main systems would be disabled until someone else re-enabled them, Bluestreak yanked his cords free and let them retract back into his wrist housing. Another shudder wracked him as his protocols made him notice how handsome the rebooting Seeker’s face was, how strong his engine had sounded as it roared to climax, how fine his plating felt under his fingers, and surely they would make strong, fast sparklings, if only he’d hold him, protect him, the heat wasn’t over, protect his mate, cover him, soothe him when he wakes, guard him from others, keep him –

Bluestreak lurched away from Thundercracker. The Seeker’s turbines were starting to spin slowly again, and more pheromones were wafting into the garage’s air. The heat wasn’t over. How wasn’t it over? His heat should be over. Thundercracker had overloaded into reset. _My mate, so strong, he needs more, go back, give him more, fill him, fill his needs..._ Bluestreak shook his helm, trying to clear it of the code muttering to him, telling him to fold Thundercracker in his arms again until he came back online, to take him again as soon as he was receptive. _Keep going, take him again, your mate needs you, fill him, cover him, spark him, ignite, give him a new life..._

With a cough of his vents, Bluestreak looked around, trying to find the wire that Thundercracker had used to bind his wrists and ankles, but couldn’t find it on the dusty floor. One of them had probably kicked it away while fragging. No matter. Bluestreak didn’t think he’d have the strength to tie the jet up, anyway.

It seemed to take a huge effort to haul himself to his pedes and stagger the few paces to the tiny arrangement of human-sized desks in the corner of the garage. Bluestreak looked around on the desks for a moment before finding what he was looking for: a small radio, connected to wires that ran to the ceiling. He hoped that meant there was an external antenna, one that hadn’t been damaged or destroyed by whatever had happened to this building.

Kneeling beside the desk, Bluestreak checked that the power to the radio was on, then grabbed the base unit mic. He pressed a large, clumsy finger onto the tiny transmission key. “Mayday mayday mayday. Bluestreak to any Autobots listening, come in, please. I need assistance. Blaster, are you hearing me?” He let go of the transmission key and listened. Nothing except the whisper of radio ghosts. He pressed the transmit button again. “C’mon, Blaster. Please tell me you’re monitoring. I hope like slag this radio is working. Bluestreak to any Autobots listening, come in. Mayday mayday mayday.”

“Hey there, baby Blue!” Blaster’s voice crackled out of the speaker set on top of the desk, and Bluestreak let his helm fall backwards in relief. “We’ve been lookin’ all over for you. What are ya doin’ on a human frequency?”

“I’m in a basement, or a garage, or something. It looks like the ceiling collapsed, but there’s enough room to move around in here.” Bluestreak pulled a full vent, then whimpered as he realized he had just sucked in another dose of the Seeker’s pheromones. He stared at the blank wall behind the radio, not wanting to turn to look at Thundercracker yet, not until he’d delivered his message. He knew as soon as he saw the blue jet, his coding would take over and he’d be lost to the heat craze once more. “Look, I’ve got a situation. Thundercracker’s in here with me. He took me prisoner, disabled my comms and weapons, but... I managed to do the same to him. Here are my coordinates.” He rattled off the information from his positioning sensors; at least Thundercracker hadn’t disabled those. “We’re going to have to be dug out.”

There was a pause, and Bluestreak imagined Blaster relaying this information to the command team. Bluestreak pulled in another vent of air without thinking, and felt his coding surge. _Get back to your mate, he needs you, tend to him, go to him..._ With a growl of his engine, Bluestreak locked down his air intake system. _Slag! Not yet!_ He needed to keep his processor clear, at least until he could finish speaking to Blaster. Hopefully just a few minutes with no air wouldn’t overtax his systems too much.

Finally the host mech came back onto the airwaves. “Got it, Blue. We’re sending a team in to get you out of there. Is old TC still a concern?”

“No, but... There’s something else you need to know,” Bluestreak said. He worked his intake, feeling the tenderness from where he’d bitten down on his glossa earlier to clear his processor. “Thundercracker went into heat, bad. He... I....” Bluestreak heard a thick moan behind him, and stared even more intently at the wall. _Your mate is still here, he is back online, go to him, he needs you, go, go..._ He could hear his engine whining, and he was sure that it was audible over the radio. “It’s still going on, and it’s bad. I mean, it’s really, **really** strong.” His voice quavered as he remembered just how hard the pheromones had hit him. He could still feel them crawling through his systems, nudging him, urging him, _go back, go to your mate, go to him, cover him, comfort him, give him what he needs, his needs..._ “Whoever comes in here needs to have suppressants. And Blaster... One more thing...” Bluestreak heard another moan from Thundercracker, accompanied by a sticky-sounding squelching noise. He almost dropped the transmitter right then, but he gritted his dentae and focused his attention on the interlocking cement blocks that made up the garage wall. The white paint they’d used to cover the blocks was bubbled away in a few places, revealing the grey cement underneath. “Please. Only tell who needs to know, ok?”

For as much as Bluestreak was respected as a skilled sniper on the battlefield, the other Autobots still seemed to think of him as someone who needed to be protected, or a mech who was so fragile that almost anything could set off one of his panic attacks. Sure, he had some issues, but he was hardly fragile. That, and he had never been able to shake the misunderstanding that had followed him for his whole career in the Autobots: that he was barely into his adult upgrades, when he’d been fully mature for centuries before the war even started.

He guessed he just looked young.

It was bad enough that this was the first time Bluestreak had been captured. It was worse that he’d been captured by a Seeker. But the very last thing Bluestreak wanted was for everyone to find out that he’d been trapped in an enclosed space with a Seeker in heat.

_Poor Bluestreak. So young. So damaged. So precious. So in need of being cared for. Poor thing._

Bluestreak’s engine snarled softly as he pictured the look of pity in everyone’s optics when they found out exactly what had happened.

There was another pause, shorter than the previous one. Blaster’s reply was mercifully short. “I copy, Blue. All of it. We’re letting Ratchet and a limited team know now. Discretion is the word. But it’ll take us a bit to get to you, all right? So hang in there.”

“Copy, Blaster. And thanks.”

With his message delivered, Bluestreak let the tiny mic fall from his fingers, and it hit the surface of the desk with a clatter. He turned and looked at Thundercracker.

One of the blue jet’s hands was between his legs, three thick fingers sunk into his valve. He pumped them in and out spasmodically, as if he was unable to keep up a rhythm. His other hand clutched at the side of one of his turbines, the tips of his fingers bending the flanges inside.

Heedless of the debris on the ground digging into his knee guards, Bluestreak crawled back to Thundercracker. When he reached out and put his hand on the jet’s ankle, Thundercracker moaned again as if Bluestreak had put his finger directly against his anterior node. “More,” Thundercracker gasped, his helm rocking to the side as his fingers fragged his loose, sloppy valve with an obscene squelching sound. “Please. I need more.”

Bluestreak crawled up Thundercracker’s frame, his hand smoothing across the jet’s plating as he moved. Bluestreak’s HUD flashed a warning about his core temperature; he would have to open his vents again soon. But he needed to keep his processor clear, for just a little while longer, so he could ask the questions that he needed to ask. “I don’t understand why this is still going on,” Bluestreak said. He looked into Thundercracker’s optics, and saw the raw desperation there. _His mate, he needs more, give it to him, now, he’s running so hot, he needs you, needs all you have, his needs..._ “You reset. It was a full reboot. That should have stopped it, but it didn’t. Why didn’t that stop it?” He heard the edge of desperation in his voice. _This should be **over** by now, fraggit!_

With his free hand, Thundercracker pulled at Bluestreak, urging the Praxian on top of him, while still filling valve with his own fingers. “Seeker. High-performance flight frame,” Thundercracked gasped. He whined softly as Bluestreak slung a leg over his waist and settled on top of him. “Heats are... We need more charge to sate it. Heats are dealt with in trines.”

“So you just need one more good overload?” Bluestreak asked, ignoring another flurry of temperature warnings. He vaguely remembered stories, before the war, of how Vosians handled heats differently. Stories that were whispered behind hands and were accompanied by titters at the perversion. Bluestreak’s processor felt muddy, though, and he couldn’t remember the specifics. He ran his hands up the clearsteel of Thundercracker’s cockpit, noting how the jet’s engines coughed when the pads of his fingers bumped clumsily over the metal brackets on each side. “Another overload and it’ll be over? Would that do it?”

Thundercracker shook his helm. “Not just an overload,” he gasped. “I need... I need...” He made a garbled noise and grabbed at Bluestreak’s hands, holding held them away from his frame. “I can’t think with you touching me...” He gritted his dentae, squeezing his optics shut tightly. “Focus, Thundercracker!” he growled. When he opened his optics again, their colour was lighter, and some of the static was gone from his voice. “Listen. Trine. We mate in threes. One in heat, the other two rutting. And it’s rough. One mate tries to outdo the other. The one in heat tries to take them both at once. It’s always done that way. It can be vicious, and that’s how we like it. There’s pain. Clawing. Biting. Marking. Claiming. And then after... Afterwards...” His voice was becoming thick again, and he scraped Bluestreak’s hands down the sides of his fuselage, leaving faint scratches in the paint. “Look. I just need more. Harder. Break me. Make it hurt. Make me **feel** it,” he gasped, his voice pleading. “Please... Put out my flames. It’s the only way to make this stop...” His voice faded into feedback.

Red flashed around the edges of Bluestreak’s vision, indicating his core temperature had reached critical levels, and he opened his vents. The first draught of cool air brought with it the brunt of the Seeker’s heat scent, and Bluestreak gasped as his spike pressurized fully in just a few seconds.

He slid backwards, reaching down between Thundercracker’s legs, and his fingers grazed the edges of the jet’s valve. The outer edges were puffy and hot, slick with lubricant and sticky with the residue of their earlier joining. Thundercracker mewled, his hips tipping upwards at the slight touch. He grabbed at Bluestreak’s wrist, clumsily pushing and twisting at him as if to get the Praxian to shove his fingers into his opening.

 _Fill him, help him, he needs you, give him what he needs, what you need, pump him full..._ With a shake of his helm, Bluestreak concentrated, trying to remember what Thundercracker had just told him. Something about a trine. Something about pain. Something about marking. Something about... He ran the tips of his fingers down Thundercracker’s sides, feeling the light scratches. “You want it rough?” he murmured, and was rewarded with a distorted moan. With both hands, one covered in lubricant, Bluestreak dug his fingers into the paint and clawed his way down harder, metal screeching on metal, and Thundercracker warbled. “You want it to hurt?”

Thundercracker groaned something that sounded like an affirmative.

Bluestreak had never been able to figure out whether the claws that almost all Decepticons wore were a necessity, required by their rank structure or social status, or were just a fashion. Whatever it was, the trend had never caught on in the Autobot ranks, so the tips of Bluestreak’s fingers were blunt instead of sharp. But perhaps that was for the best: instead of making thin scratches in Thundercracker’s paint, Bluestreak was digging deep gouges in the Seeker’s plating, denting the metal and scouring the paint.

Thundercracker’s vocalizer crackled with feedback and static as his plating was scored.

With a swift motion, Bluestreak slid backwards, his spike sliding down Thundercracker’s plating, before thrusting forwards, sheathing himself fully inside Thundercracker. “You want me to hurt you while I’m fragging you?” Bluestreak gasped. He could feel his processor going fuzzy again, his coding telling him to fill his mate, and fulfil his needs. _His needs._ He wanted to be hurt. He wanted to be marked.

Bluestreak was not violent by nature. In fact, his pacifist disposition had been a problem for him during training, when his squeamishness about engaging in actual combat ended up with him doing many hours of remedial conditioning. It was only after long practice that Bluestreak was able to set aside his distaste for combat and become an effective sniper for the Autobots. He would fight if he had to, and he could fire on a target he was given.

Purposefully damaging a mech he was fragging, especially one in heat, went against both his nature and the heat coding’s drive to protect his mate. Except...

Thundercracker’s request whispered around the edges of his processor. _Hurt him. Make him yours. Give him what he needs._

And even in the haze of the heat response, Bluestreak was aware that the mech under him was a Seeker.

One of the mechs who had destroyed his life.

Bluestreak pulled back, his spike almost sliding free of that molten hot valve, before thrusting home again with a ring of metal on metal. Thundercracker groaned thickly, a sound of liquid longing. “You want to be claimed?” Bluestreak dug the fingers of one hand into Thundercracker’s turbines, crushing two of the flanges against the housing. “You want to be damaged?”

Beneath him, Thundercracker arched up into him, keening in pain, his optics flaring white with need. As Bluestreak pulled his fingers out of the turbine, a shard of blade came with them. A trickle of energon decorated its edge. Thundercracker bucked his hips when the blade finally snapped free, almost throwing Bluestreak off him, and he shouted in ecstasy and agony.

Looking back, Bluestreak was fairly sure that was the exact moment everything went sideways.

Bluestreak’s heat coding had been pushing at every opening it could find, whispering to him, telling him to give his mate what he needed, to do what his mate wanted. _Hurt him, mark him, claim him, make him feel it, he asked for it, **do it**._ But there was also raw anger and disgust and loathing that had been simmering just beneath the surface, ever since he had first realized that he was trapped in an enclosed space with a Seeker. The tranquilizer program and his heat coding had been preventing Bluestreak from whirling into a crash of terror, and normally the heat coding also would have smoothed over anything that detracted from the drive to interface with the mech in heat... Even the anger that coiled in the back of Bluestreak’s processor from the moment the lights had come on in the basement.

When Thundercracker bucked into him, nearly tossing Bluestreak to the side and straining the cables at his hips, that anger bubbled to the surface.

“Stop it!” Bluestreak yelled. He threw the broken flange to the side, and it clattered on the floor. “Stop moving!” He grabbed Thundercracker’s hands and shoved them down onto the ground, pinning them on either side of the Seeker’s helm. “This is hard enough without you-”

Thundercracker bucked again with a gasp as his hands were shoved into the garage floor, and Bluestreak lost his balance. He tipped forward, and the crest of his helm crashed against Thundercracker’s chinguard.

Bluestreak’s vison pixilated on impact, and the anger that the heat coding had been fighting to subdue boiled over into the burning hatred that it was.

Hatred for the war.

Hatred for the coding imperative that coaxed and wheedled him into doing something that he would never want to do under any other circumstances.

Hatred for the Seeker writhing beneath him.

Hatred for all of the decisions and events and meetings and coincidences that led to his one moment, with his spike sunk deep into the valve of one of the mechs who was responsible for destroying everything he had loved: his home, his friends, his business, his life.

And Thundercracker had **asked** to be hurt.

“You want this to hurt?” Bluestreak snarled. “I can do that.” He let go of one of Thundercracker’s hands, made a fist, and punched the Seeker as hard as he could.

Thundercracker cried out, half in pain and half in desire. Energon leaked from his broken nasal ridge, and his optics bleached white for a moment. His valve clutched at Bluestreak’s spike, and he moaned. “Yes.”

Revulsion reared up in Bluestreak’s processor at what he had just done, but the coding intercepted it before it could take hold, molding it into something it could use. In place of revulsion, a thrill of satisfaction ran up Bluestreak’s spinal strut. _Fill him, fill his needs, his needs, hurt him, damage him, break him, his needs, your needs, fire, pain, make him feel it..._

He reared back and punched Thundercracker again.

Bluestreak lost track of how many punches he threw. He wasn’t skilled at grappling or hand-to-hand, although he’d learned the basics in training, and Ironhide made sure all the Autobots could at least put up a respectable fight. But he knew how to throw a punch with his weight behind it, and he rained blows down on Thundercracker.

A broken nasal ridge, drooling energon. A cracked jaw, one side hanging limp inside the mesh of Thundercracker’s face. A shattered optic. A crushed helm vent. A dozen contusions and dents scattered across his cheeks.

And beneath him, Thundercracker thrashed and moaned, his valve clutching at the spike inside him.

Bluestreak gasped with each wave of compression, his charge rising and his fans roaring. He stopped hitting Thundercracker, grabbed at his neck, and began thrusting as hard as he could. _Make him feel it, make him hurt._ “Is **this** what you wanted?” Bluestreak screamed, his hands tightening around Thundercracker’s neck cords. He felt the delicate mesh covering Thundercracker’s lines dent, then collapse. The Seeker’s mouth hung open, his optics wide, and his hands scrabbled at Bluestreak’s. “Is **this** what you wanted me to do?”

Thundercracker’s optics began to dim as the energon flow to his processor was cut off by Bluestreak’s fingers around his neck. The Praxian’s lips twisted into a snarl as he tightened his fingers around the Seeker’s neck. _Hurt him, use him, make him pay, remember what he did, remember what he asked for, he asked for this, hurt him..._

Thundercracker’s vents made a garbled squealing noise and his fans stalled.

Bluestreak’s heat coding continued to whisper to him, urging him to continue. _Make it hurt, mark him, claim him, use him, hurt him._ He tightened his hands around the hated Seeker’s throat, feeling his thumbs digging into the main lines under the protective layers. Thundercracker’s hands clutched weakly at Bluestreak’s wrists, trying to pull them away.

Just a few more moments and there would be one less Seeker on this planet to worry about.

Another voice from his past bubbled up in his memory, cutting through the furious haze clouding his processor. It wasn’t the sergeant this time, giving instruction and words of wisdom that he never expected to be used. Instead, it was the authoritative voice of Optimus Prime, laying down the rules of engagement on this strange new theatre of battle in which they found themselves, on the planet the inhabitants called Earth.

“You will fight with honour. I have no doubt that all of you will fight your hardest when necessary to protect humans and your fellow Autobots. But as soon as a Decepticon – even Megatron himself – is not an immediate threat, you will disengage. You will not kill **anyone** who is not presenting an imminent threat to you or to others. Is that clear?”

The Prime’s voice had rung out over the Autobots gathered, and all of them had replied with a prompt, “Yes, sir!”

Including Bluestreak.

Horror rose again in Bluestreak’s processor, smothering the heat coding’s directives, and he snatched his hands away from Thundercracker’s throat. “Oh, Primus,” he rasped. “What am I doing?”

Then, in a blaze of sparks and charge, Thundercracker overloaded, drawing Bluestreak with him.

As Thundercracker’s optics went blazing white, Bluestreak screamed through his own overload. The flow of charge from one mech to another, normally a sensation that skated the delightful edge of pain before tipping over into rapturous pleasure, felt as though Bluestreak had been jacked directly into an electrical conduit. Everything felt wrong, from the agonizing punch of current through his frame to the crash down from his overload’s high as Thundercracker’s charge ricocheted back into him. He convulsed as his dampeners activated, protecting him from the worst of the transferred charge.

When he was able to open his optics again, he lifted himself up on arms that shook alarmingly. Then he raised his helm, and he was staring right into Thundercracker’s unlit, sightless optics.

Bluestreak trembled in pain as he looked at the ruin of Thundercracker’s face. The Seeker’s proud features had been reduced to an oozing mass of gouges and tears, and the cords of his neck were deformed in the perfect shape of Bluestreak’s thumbs.

He had done this. He had taken a helpless mech in heat and hurt him. Damaged him. Killed him?

Thundercracker’s frame was still. His fans were silent. There was no sound from his inner systems.

“No,” Bluestreak whispered, his tanks lurching. For as much as he hated the Seekers, even with his attempts to bring them down in flames every time he saw them on the battlefield, no mech deserved this. To abuse a mech like this when they were at their most vulnerable was abhorrent, and he had done this. Against orders. _Against the Prime._ “What have I done?” he murmured, his hands floating like leaves over Thundercracker’s shattered features.

When his fingers passed over the crushed helm vents, Bluestreak felt the gentle breath of air movement. He froze and listened. Nothing. He pressed his audio receptor to Thundercracker’s chest, over his spark, and listened, trying to filter out the seemingly raucous roar of his own spark spinning wildly.

In the Seeker’s chest, Bluestreak heard the soft thrum of his systems as his spark rotated slowly.

“Thank Primus,” Bluestreak murmured, hugging Thundercracker for a moment. He shifted, sliding up Thundercracker’s frame, his depressurized spike smearing fluids up the side of the jet’s fuselage. He moved around carefully until he held Thundercracker’s helm in his lap, cradling it gently between his hands.

Tendrils of his heat coding reasserted themselves, and Bluestreak shuddered again, afraid of what the protocols would ask of him now. But his coding was no longer urging him to hurt Thundercracker. Instead, it gently pushed him to protect the jet. Soothe him. Care for him as he came back online. Bluestreak could feel the Seeker’s temperature slowly cooling, and he wasn’t scenting any new pheromones being released from his vents.

It was over.

Bluestreak stared down at Thundercracker, forcing himself to look at what he’d done to the Seeker. As his coding whispered to him, he took in the damage to Thundercracker’s helm, and he gingerly touched the dents in his throat.

“I’m so sorry,” Bluestreak murmured. _I’m sorry for hurting you._ “I wish none of this had happened.” _I’m sorry for not finishing it._ Thundercracker’s broken lips parted slowly, as if to reply. Bluestreak made a soft shushing noise and wiped away the fresh dribble of energon from his mouth that Thundercracker’s motion had caused. “Shh,” Bluestreak said. “Just rest.”

Then, slowly, Bluestreak lowered his helm and waited for the Autobots to find them.


	3. Chapter 3

Prowl found him in the washracks.

Bluestreak sat against the wall, curled into as small of a ball as he could make himself. His pedes were planted on the floor, crossed at the ankles. His arms rested on his knees, and his helm was bowed so that his face was buried in his forearms. The steaming hot water washed down over him, creating a cloud of steam around him through which he could see, hear or sense nothing. He had retreated to the washracks as soon as his debrief and medical inspection were completed to wash away all the traces he could find of his encounter: concrete dust, paint transfers, dried transfluid and lubricant, energon caked between his finger joints. All of it washed down the drain of the washrack.

But nothing short of a mnemosurgeon would be able to remove the memory of Thundercracker’s battered and leaking helm cradled in his lap, or of how it had felt when the Seeker’s energon lines crumpled beneath his thumbs.

...How **good** it had felt.

When the Autobots had finally dug their way into the basement garage, Bluestreak had barely even registered their arrival until Ratchet put a hand on his shoulder. Bluestreak had looked up at the medic, startling out of the pensive state he had sunk into, and he saw the concern on Ratchet’s face.

“Status report, Bluestreak,” Ratchet said curtly, but he was already palming open Thundercracker’s medical port so that he could jack into the prone Seeker.

“Minor armor damage. Some auxiliary systems are offline. Energy’s at 25%,” Bluestreak recited dully. He watched as Ratchet started spraying fixative across the worst of the gashes in Thundercracker’s face, stopping the slow leak of energon from the gouges and tears in his facial mesh.

“Looks like you got the better of Thundercracker,” Ironhide said, smiling down at Bluestreak. He crouched next to him, slapping a hand on Bluestreak’s shoulder. “So you managed to overpower him a bit before his heat hit, huh? With how ya performed in our sparring sessions, I never figured you for a brawler.”

“No,” Bluestreak said, hearing his voice go cold. “That’s not what happened.” He looked up at the other mechs who had dug their way into the basement: Brawn, Huffer, and Prowl. At Bluestreak’s curt tone, Prowl’s lips quirked into a deeper frown than they had been in already, and Bluestreak dropped his gaze back to Thundercracker’s wrecked features. “I did this **after** the heat had started. I did this **after** I called for help.” He traced a thumb down the side of Thundercracker’s smashed helm vent. “I did this while he was in the heat craze.”

Bluestreak remembered how they had all gone silent. He remembered how Ironhide had slowly lifted his hand from his shoulder before backing away. He remembered the icily silent flight back to the Ark.

Bluestreak cycled his vents, pulling in another inhalation of cleansing steam.

As Blaster had promised, discretion had been the word, but there was no hiding the fact that something bad had happened. It was no secret that they had brought back a severely damaged Decepticon with them, since there were security protocols that were put into motion as soon as they landed. And when Bluestreak was whisked into the medbay alongside Thundercracker, the mechs who had dug them out of the basement were pulled aside for a secondary debrief with Prowl and Optimus Prime. Bluestreak overheard enough of the conversation in the other room to hear that they were being directed to keep the whole thing quiet until the investigation was completed. But when Ironhide, Brawn and Huffer filed out, the glances they cast in his direction might as well have been incendiary shells.

Before, he had been fearing seeing pity in other mechs’ optics when they found out what had happened. He hadn’t thought that he’d be seeing derision and revulsion instead.

While Ratchet was busy fixing the damage to Thundercracker’s face and helm, Bluestreak submitted to a full scan of his processor and systems. He waited silently as First Aid repaired the damage to his hands and re-enabled the auxiliary systems that Thundercracker had taken offline. Then, after receiving an admonishment from Prowl to stay on base, Bluestreak was released from medbay.

Bluestreak had sought out the most isolated washrack he could find: the one in the bowels of the ship, closest to the lava tubes that fed the volcano. The water that ran in this rack was uncomfortably hot, so they were rarely used. Bluestreak had been mercifully alone since he’d walked in, hours before. He’d been placed on leave pending an investigation into his actions, so he had no shift to report for. His comms had been re-enabled, but he’d shut them off as soon as he’d left medbay. He tried to focus on the heat and the sting of the near-boiling hot water, but the images of Thundercracker’s ruined face kept surfacing in his memory... Alongside the images of his assistant Greenbough, and the memory of him bleeding out in the flaming ruins of his shop, reaching for Bluestreak’s hand, just a few millimetres out of reach.

Bluestreak remembered watching the light fade from Greenbough’s optics while hearing the roar of Seekers patrolling overhead, looking for survivors.

Bluestreak remembered watching Thundercracker’s optics flicker as his spark started to fade.

_I could have **finished** it._

He shuddered despite the heat of the water pouring over him.

“Bluestreak?”

He looked up to see Prowl standing a scant few meters away. “Hi,” Bluestreak said, and watched the tactician warily. It looked like Prowl was alone, although Bluestreak couldn’t sense anything through the thick cloud of steam around him. Maybe someone else was waiting just outside the washrack. Then again, he didn’t see a set of cuffs in Prowl’s hands, either.

“Bluestreak, can I turn off the water?” Prowl asked, his voice sounding strangely gentle. “Your paint is blistering. You must have been in here for hours.”

Bluestreak looked down at the paint on his arms, and saw small bubbles forming under the top layer of paint. Based on the pain he felt on his back and legs, he guessed the rest of his paint was doing the same thing. Sunstreaker would have a fit... If he ever wanted to speak to Bluestreak again, after he found out what Bluestreak had done. “Sure,” Bluestreak said, and waited as Prowl turned the water off. In the sudden silence, Prowl’s pedesteps on the floor tiles sounded very loud as he walked back to sit in front of him. Bluestreak buried his face in his arms again so that he didn’t have to look at the other Praxian. “Are you here to take me to the brig?”

“No,” said Prowl.

Bluestreak stiffened, but didn’t look up. “Why not?” he asked. His voice sounded strange and rough even to his own audials. He wondered if Prowl could hear the crackle under his words. “You know what I did. Optimus said there would be an investigation.” He worked his intake, trying to clear his vocalizer. “But I don’t know what there is to investigate. I admitted it. I did it. I beat a mech in heat while he was incapacitated. I...” His tanks lurched as he remembered Thundercracker’s face crumpling under his fists, and how **good** it had felt to hurt him, and he was suddenly glad he hadn’t bothered to pick up a fuel ration on his way to the washrack. “I deserve to be punished.”

There was a pause before Prowl replied. “Ratchet reviewed the log files that First Aid pulled from your systems during your debrief. Based on what he saw in them, he recommended that you be cleared from any charges.”

Bluestreak lifted his helm and looked at Prowl in surprise. “What?” he asked, wondering if he’d heard Prowl correctly. “Why?”

Prowl’s voice and expression were as solemn and calm as they always were. “He’s still looking through the logs in more detail, but he suspects that the tranquilizer program you have installed interfered with your heat coding.” Prowl’s door wings dipped slightly, as if in apology. “I know that your tranquilizer program was installed in a rush, after your first few episodes after you joined the Autobots. Whoever coded it apparently never thought that it would be initiated at the same time that your heat coding was active. And... Under normal circumstances, it likely never would have. But...” Prowl lifted a hand, gesturing at the rock of the volcano that made up the far wall of the washrack. “Ever since waking on his planet, we’ve encountered many situations that we never thought we would.” He looked back at Bluestreak intently. “You weren’t in control of your actions, Bluestreak.”

Bluestreak was shaking his helm even before Prowl had stopped talking. “But that’s just it. I **should** have had more control. You saw what I did to him.”

“I did see. And if you had been in full control of yourself, I know that you never would have done that.” Prowl spoke with a tone of absolute certainty.

“I wanted to **kill** him, Prowl,” Bluestreak said sharply.

Prowl sighed softly. “I know that you hate the Decepticons, especially the Seekers, as much as I do. But I have fought alongside you for a long time, and I know that you are a mech of honour. I see proof of that every day. You may have wanted to kill him, but you didn’t. You did the right thing, stopping yourself.” Prowl leaned forward to place a hand on Bluestreak’s pede. “And I can tell that you feel terrible about what you **did** do to him. Am I right?”

Of course he felt terrible. He felt terrible about what he did. He felt terrible about what he didn’t do. Unsure how his voice would sound if he spoke, Bluestreak just nodded.

Prowl returned the nod and sat back up. “Plus, Thundercracker came back online and was questioned about what happened. He claims...” Prowl’s face twitched into a momentary frown, and his door wings lifted slightly. “He claims that you were only doing what he asked you to do. Thundercracker was asked whether he wanted us to press forward with charges, and he refused.” Prowl lifted his hands and raised his shoulders in a shrug. “So that, combined with what Ratchet found in your system logs, Optimus Prime couldn’t see any reason to press forward with charges of misconduct or assault.”

Bluestreak let his helm sink back into his arms. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t seem real. How could he do something so heinous, but then just drive off as if nothing had happened? “So what happens now?” he asked faintly.

“Once he’s finished the analysis of how your tranquilizer program interacted with your other systems, Ratchet will install a patch,” Prowl said. “It should have been patched centuries ago, but there was no indication that anything was wrong with your program... Until now.”

“Can’t he just uninstall the tranquilizer program?” Bluestreak asked, looking up at Prowl again. “That way I can be sure that this never happens again.”

Prowl’s door wings tipped downwards, and he shook his helm. “That’s between you and Ratchet, of course. But I remember your first few episodes before it was installed. I’m sure you do as well. Do you really want to go through that again?”

Bluestreak lowered his optics. He remembered the first time his processor had gotten locked into a loop, cycling over and over with the same freeze/flight/fright response after hearing the roar of what sounded like a Seeker’s turbines winding up. No, that’s not quite true: he didn’t remember all of it. His processor loop had corrupted his memory of the incident, so all Bluestreak remembered was waking in the Autobot base’s medical bay. His brakes and tires had been burned up as he’d tried to flee and freeze at the same time, and he’d suffered spark palpitations for weeks after the incident. The second time it had happened, he had just had his shoulder missiles installed. With the amount of damage he had done to the base, he’d been deemed a danger to himself and others.

After the second episode, he had been advised that he could either have the program installed, or be released from the Autobots. And at the time, being a Neutral on Cybertron was a death sentence. He’d agreed to have the program installed.

“No,” Bluestreak muttered finally. “I don’t want to go through that again.” He met Prowl’s gaze. “I’ll let Ratchet install the patch.”

Prowl nodded. “Good. Ratchet is advising me that he should have it ready in a day or two. Until then, you’ll remain off duty and confined to your quarters. Just in case.” Prowl dipped his wings apologetically.

 _Just in case I run across any other mechs in heat_ , Bluestreak thought bitterly. He’d been the one to find Hound, and he’d wound up stuck in that basement with Thundercracker. What were the chances he’d run into anyone else in the same condition?

Then again, they said things ran in threes. Like Seekers.

“What about Thundercracker?” Bluestreak asked.

“We’ve contacted the Decepticons and advised them that we have Thundercracker,” Prowl said. “Considering the circumstances, we’ll be releasing him with no conditions.”

 _The circumstances._ The circumstances being that Thundercracker had essentially been the victim of a war crime. Bluestreak’s tanks lurched again as he wondered how long it would be until Starscream found out what had happened to his trinemate and decided to enact revenge. “Are you sure you don’t want to throw me in the brig?” Bluestreak asked. He thought about how Ironhide, Brawn and Huffer had looked at him, knowing what he’d done. “I may not have been in control of my actions but... I did do something terrible. I do deserve some kind of consequences. And besides, the others who came into that basement saw what I did, and they’re going to wonder why I’m just getting let off. And I’m going to be confined to quarters anyway. Would it matter if I spend it in my quarters or in the brig?” _Let me atone for what I did, and for what I wanted to do._

Prowl frowned. “We could if you want us to,” he said slowly. He looked at Bluestreak carefully. “But Optimus has already explained to the others that you experienced a glitch while in the basement. They seemed to accept that. And you would be more comfortable in your quarters.”

But Bluestreak was already climbing to his pedes. He wobbled as he caught his balance. His cables felt weak after being drenched in boiling water and steam for hours, and his plating stung. “I’m really not interested in feeling comfortable right now,” Bluestreak said after he’d steadied himself. He held out a hand to Prowl and helped him up. “I just want to do whatever I can to make up for what I did... Regardless of whether I was in control of myself or not.”

After a long look at Bluestreak, Prowl nodded. “All right,” he said. He held out a hand, gesturing for Bluestreak to walk in front of him. “Then let’s go.”

* * *

Thundercracker lounged back on the berth in his cell. The cushion on the berth was thin, but it was clean. That was more than he could say of the cells that the Decepticons kept their prisoners in. Thundercracker couldn’t even remember the last time the cells themselves had been cleaned, let alone have the cushions refreshed.

Did the Decepticon cells even **have** cushions? He couldn’t remember. He’d have to check when he got back. After his debrief, that was. Thundercracker grimaced, knowing that meant that Soundwave would be rummaging around in his processor again.

Then Thundercracker hissed in pain as his grimace pulled on the sealant the Autobot’s medic had put on his facial mesh. He carefully schooled his expression back into a neutral one and waited for the sting to subside. Ratchet had told him that if he was in too much pain he could give him some pain blockers, but Thundercracker wanted his wits about him until he got back to the Decepticon base.

After he’d been repaired and questioned about exactly what had gone down between him and Bluestreak, Thundercracker realized that the Autobots weren’t particularly happy about what the gunner had done. Actually, they’d seemed horrified, and seemed to be treating Thundercracker with a deference that he hadn’t expected. The Autobots looked surprised when he’d said that he had asked Bluestreak to hurt him, but their line of questioning made it clear that they didn’t particularly believe what he’d said.

And true, Bluestreak had gone far, far beyond what Thundercracker’s trine would have done. There had been a fury and a cruelty behind his actions that his trine wouldn’t have had. Plus, Thundercracker had missed out on the important bits of cuddling and repairing their bonds after the heat. And... _Slag._ Thundercracker sighed, casting his optics towards the ceiling of the cell. When Star and Warp finally got back to Earth from their mission, Starscream was going to blow a gasket after finding out what had been done to his trinemate.

Out of old habit, Thundercracker threw his arm across his optics. Then he immediately winced, and carefully lifted his arm off of the fresh weld on his helm vent.

Thundercracker was pretty sure he could keep Starscream from going ballistic on the Autobots in revenge and doing something supremely stupid. After all, Thundercracker had tried to explain to Bluestreak how a mating frenzy worked for Seekers, but he’d done it while under the heat influence. He probably hadn’t made much sense, so it was understandable that Bluestreak had misunderstood. (Sure, a misunderstanding, Starscream **might** buy that. He didn’t think too highly of the Autobots to begin with.)

And maybe Bluestreak would consider this tit for tat. They had almost killed him back in Praxus, and he had almost killed Thundercracker. Maybe he wouldn’t be so quick to take unauthorized shots at them now. (Unlikely, but it was another argument he could load onto Starscream to keep him from doing a lone strafing run of the Ark.)

Plus... Thundercracker shuddered. Even with the injuries he’d sustained and being captured, he had been better off being trapped with the Autobot’s sniper when his heat hit, instead of being back at base without his trine to protect him. Thundercracker had seen what Motormaster and the triplechangers had done to Vortex before Onslaught had intervened. It had been weeks before the helicopter could even transform again, and his mates had been **trying** to be gentle.

Mixmaster had run out of suppressants a month ago, and was still trying to manufacture more. At this rate, Thundercracker wondered whether the faction would just end up fragging each other to death before they figured out what the problem was. The mandatory isolation Hook had instituted for mechs going into heat had only slowed the problem. Eventually, things were going to reach a boiling point.

“Heh. Boiling point,” Thundercracker said to himself. You know. Heat. Boiling.

He should write this stuff down sometime.

At least he hadn’t ignited. Or at least he didn’t think he had; surely Ratchet would have scanned for that and mentioned it to him if he had. And wouldn’t that have been a gigantic mess if he’d ended up bearing an Autobot-sired sparkling?

Bluestreak must have had a working inhibitor, because for as hard as they’d both overloaded, Thundercracker should have easily have been sparked. Thundercracker frowned (gently) at the ceiling again. Maybe he should ask to have a new inhibitor installed before he was turned back over to the Decepticons. With all the fragging and charge getting passed around lately, everyone’s inhibitors were burning out, and Hook was running out of **those** , too.

With a groan, Thundercracker rolled off the cushy berth and got to his pedes. He stood in front of the glowing bars and stared at the reflective mirror on the wall opposite his cell. It was painfully obvious that it was a one-way mirror (with an Autobot guard on the other side), but it would do for his purposes.

He turned his helm back and forth, examining the repairs Ratchet had done. The worst of the damage had been fixed, so Hook shouldn’t have much to complain about. But the Autobots’ medic didn’t have any red optics to replace his crushed one. Fortunately, he’d had a yellow one, so Thundercracker’s optics were mismatched. He could deal with one red and one yellow optic. He didn’t think he could go back to the Decepticons sporting a blue optic, even if it was temporary.

The most nagging problem left, aside from the stiffness in his welded jaw and the sting of the glue and sealant across his face, was his throat. He worked his intake gingerly, and winced again at the pain he felt in his throat. As Ratchet had muttered and First Aid had explained more clearly, the damage Bluestreak had done to his throat didn’t just affect his main energon line. All of the cabling and tubing under the protective mesh of his throat had been crushed or compromised in some way. It would take several weeks for his self-repair to resolve the worst of the damage, and First Aid had warned him that it would probably hurt to swallow for months after that.

Thundercracker lifted his chin and examined his throat closely in the mirrored surface of the window. He could faintly see the impression of thumbs and fingers in the delicate mesh over his cables and cords. Even if he hadn’t sparked him up, it looked like Bluestreak had given him something to remember him by, after all.

He turned his helm when he heard voices just outside the door to the cell area. A moment later, Ironhide and Prowl entered the room. Ironhide’s hand was closed around Bluestreak’s upper arm, and Thundercracker saw that the young Praxian was wearing cuffs. Bluestreak’s optics were fixed on the ground in front of him.

“Hey!” Thundercracker said as they walked past his cell. When none of the Autobots reacted, he tried again. “Hey! I said I didn’t want to press any charges. It was all consensual. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

Finally, as Ironhide ushered Bluestreak into the cell beside Thundercracker, Prowl turned and looked at the Seeker. “Your testimony was appreciated, but this is now an internal Autobot matter.” Then he looked back and watched Ironhide activate the light barrier on the other cell.

“But he didn’t do anything wrong!” Thundercracker said again, but neither Prowl nor Ironhide looked at him. As they turned to leave the brig, he tried a different tact. “So when am I going to be let go?”

“Shut your yap, ‘Con,” Ironhide growled. “You’ll find out when we’re lettin’ ya go when we do it. And not until then.”

Prowl looked into the cell where Bluestreak had been placed, then glanced at Thundercracker. “Are you sure?” he asked Bluestreak.

“I am,” Bluestreak said, his voice so soft that Thundercracker barely heard him.

“All right.” Prowl glanced at Thundercracker again. “Just call for assistance if you need **anything** , Bluestreak,” he said, his optics fixed on the Seeker. “The guard can hear everything going on in these cells,” he said, and Thundercracker had the distinct impression that Prowl was saying that for his benefit as much as for Bluestreak’s.

With a shrug, Thundercracker watched as the two Autobots left the cell area. He craned his neck, but he couldn’t see around the wall into the other cell. However, he could see Bluestreak’s reflection in the mirrored surface of the window across from him. The sniper was sitting on the berth, his wings sagging behind him, and he stared dully at the floor.

“So... Why **did** they throw you in here?” Thundercracker asked.

Bluestreak glanced up and noticed Thundercracker’s reflection in the window. He shook his helm. “It’s just easier this way,” he said quietly, meeting Thundercracker’s reflected gaze.

Thundercracker frowned for a moment. “Look... What happened...” He spread his hands out, trying to explain. “You did your best, right? I didn’t give you very clear instructions about what I needed. It was just a misunderstanding,” he said, grabbing onto the explanation he planned to give to Starscream. He watched Bluestreak shake his helm and start to look away again, so he added, “And, really, it wasn’t all that bad. A bit too rough, maybe, but I didn’t give you any other parameters. Maybe under other circumstances it would have been fun!”

Bluestreak’s door wings flared out behind him, then drooped back down to the berth surface. He stared up at the ceiling, away from Thundercracker’s reflection. “I really doubt that.”

“I dunno,” Thundercracker said. “It wasn’t all that different from what Skywarp and I have done before. And that choking thing was a little over the top, but maybe next time-“

With a groan, Bluestreak thudded his elbows onto his knees and planted his face in his hands. “I **really** don’t want to hear any of this,” he said.

Thundercracker frowned ( _ow, ow, stop doing that_ ) and looked at the sniper carefully. He looked completely, utterly defeated. “Look,” Thundercracker said finally. “I don’t know if this will help but... I forgive you. There’s a reason I didn’t make a big deal out of it after they brought me out of stasis. In a way, you did me a favour. It might not have been the best way, or the way either of us had intended, but it got the job done. It sated the heat, and... I’m still here, mostly intact. That’s more than I was expecting after realizing that I was going into heat, especially with you in the same room as me.”

Bluestreak didn’t lift his helm at Thundercracker’s words, but the Seeker heard him heave a small sigh.

“So, Bluestreak,” Thundercracker said slowly, trying to formulate the question that had been bouncing around in his processor since he’d come back online in the Autobots’ medbay. “Why **did** you stop? Choking me, I mean.” He saw Bluestreak lift his helm finally and look at him. “You could have killed me right then. I know you hate me, and the other Seekers. You could have said it was self-defence. You could have said that I tried to kill you after my heat had cleared. No one would have known, and you would have removed one of Megatron’s top lieutenants from the war.” Bluestreak was just staring at his reflection with a strange expression that Thundercracker couldn’t read. “I’m glad you didn’t, but... Before I blacked out, I remember how you looked. You looked like you were absolutely intent on killing me. I was sure I was a goner. So... Why didn’t you? What made you stop?”

There was another silence, and then Bluestreak got to his pedes and walked to the door of his cell so that they could see each other in the window’s reflection more clearly. “Remember, before... Before that all started... Remember how you told me that you were only following orders to bomb Praxus?” Bluestreak’s optics looked hard as sapphires as he met Thundercracker’s gaze. “You said that you had regrets about what happened.”

“I remember,” Thundercracker said.

Bluestreak nodded. “The only reason you’re still alive is because I was just following orders, too.” He paused, and then added, “And... You aren’t the only one with regrets.” Then he turned, walked back to the berth in his cell, and lay down, turning his back to entrance of his cell.

Thundercracker stared at Bluestreak’s back for a moment. “Well, thank you,” he said haltingly, not sure how to respond.

Bluestreak said nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started writing this fic (in December 2018, according to the file dates), I had no idea it was going to end up being this dark or this involved. My muse just said, "Hey, that heat fic was kind of fun! How about another. How about a cave-in hate-sex heat fic?"
> 
> Silly me, I said yes.
> 
> But when it turned out that it was Thundercracker that Bluestreak was trapped in there with, Blue had some things to say about how it was going to go down. This was not going to be a happy story.
> 
> Now if you'll excuse me, I have some fluff I need to finish writing as an antidote to this.
> 
> If you liked this fic, please consider sharing it on [Tumblr](https://pipermca.tumblr.com/post/186505612787/atrocity), [Twitter](https://twitter.com/pipermca/status/1153828344959397893), or [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/762806)!


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